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‘She has given us the Talons, Captain. We will find this Baudin Younger, and from him we will unravel the entire organization.
There were rumours that the lad had been an agent of Adjunct Lorn’s, and that his desertion had led, ultimately, to the woman’s death in Darujhistan. Yet, if that were true, then why did the Empress turn her royal gaze upon another child of the House of Paran? Why make Tavore the new Adjunct?
‘There are sharks that can do just that,’ Nok replied. ‘I know of at least twelve ships on the muddy bottom of the harbour in question—’ ‘Including the Twisted,’ the Adjunct drawled, ‘the old emperor’s flagship, which mysteriously slipped its moorings the night after the assassinations, then promptly plummeted into the deeps, taking its resident demon with it.’
What interests me is…a matter of personal…curiosity. I would seek to understand, Admiral, why they abandoned her.’
Kellanved began with but one companion—Dancer. The two then hired a handful of locals in Malaz City and set about conquering the criminal element in the city
‘Who were these first hirelings, Admiral?’ ‘Myself, Ameron, Dujek, a woman named Hawl—my wife.
‘Was this before they were granted entry into the Deadhouse?’ Gamet asked. ‘Aye, but only just. Our residency in the Deadhouse rewarded us with—as is now clearly evident—certain gifts. Longevity, immunity to most diseases, and…other things. The Deadhouse also provided us with an unassailable base of operations.
Dancer later bolstered our numbers by recruiting among the refugee Napans who’d fled the conquest: Cartheron Crust and his brother, Urko. And Surly—Laseen. Three more men were to follow shortly thereafter. Toc Elder, Dassem Ultor—who was, like Kellanved, of Dal Honese blood—and a renegade High Septarch of the D’rek Cult, Tayschrenn. And finally, Duiker.’ He half smiled at Tavore.
Unknown to the rest of us, the Napans among us were far more than simple refugees. Surly was of the royal line. Crust and Urko had been captains in the Napan fleet, a fleet that would have likely repelled the Untans if it hadn’t been virtually destroyed by a sudden storm. As it turned out, theirs was a singular purpose—to crush the Untan hegemony—and they planned on using Kellanved to achieve that. In a sense, that was the first betrayal within the family, the first fissure.
Surly’s assassination of Kellanved and Dancer shattered that family irrevocably, but that is precisely where my understanding falters. Surly had taken the Napan cause to its penultimate conclusion. Yet it was not you, not Tayschrenn, Duiker, Dassem Ultor or Toc Elder who…disappeared. It was…Napans.’
‘Shame is a fierce, vigorous poison. To now serve the new Empress…complicity and damnation. Crust, Urko and Ameron were not party to the betrayal…but who would believe them? Who could not help but see them as party to the murderous plot?
‘Surly had included none of us in her scheme—she could not afford to. She had the Claw, and that was all she needed.’
‘And where were the Talons in...
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The Talons essentially vanished with Dancer’s death. It was widely believed that the Claw had struck them down in concert with the assassinations of Dancer and the Emperor.’
He’d found a flap of hide from somewhere and was cutting long strands from it with a thin-bladed pig-sticker. Strings had seen his type before, obsessed with tying things down, or worse, tying things to their bodies. Not just fetishes, but loot, extra equipment, tufts of grass or leafy branches depending on the camouflage being sought.
Seti lands had been pacified for sixty years now; almost three generations had lived in that ambivalent, ambiguous border that was the edge of civilization. The various tribes had dissolved into a single, murky nation, with mixed-bloods coming to dominate the population. What had befallen them had been the impetus, in fact, for Coltaine’s rebellion and the Wickan Wars—for Coltaine had clearly seen that a similar fate awaited his own people.
Some cultures were inward-looking. Others were aggressive. The former were rarely capable of mustering a defence against the latter, not without metamorphosing into some other thing, a thing twisted by the exigencies of desperation and violence. The original Seti had not even ridden horses. Yet now they were known as horse warriors, a taller, darker-skinned and more morose kind of Wickan.
Half-bloods did not lead pleasant lives. That Koryk had chosen to emulate the old Seti ways, whilst joining the Malazan army as a marine rather than a horse warrior, spoke tomes of the clash in the man’s scarred soul.
We’re all in the 9th Company, which consists of three squads of heavy infantry, three of marines, and eighteen squads of medium infantry. Our commander is a man named Captain Keneb
Nine companies in all, making up the 8th Legion—us. The 8th is under the command of Fist Gamet, who I gather is a veteran who’d retired to the Adjunct’s household before she became the Adjunct.’
By the man’s accent and his pale, stolid features, Strings knew him as being from Li Heng. That being the case, his real name was probably a mouthful: nine, ten or even fifteen names all strung together. ‘Your new one, soldier.’ ‘Tarr.’
Once he’s planted his feet behind that shield of his, you could hit him with a battering ram and he won’t budge.’ Strings studied Tarr’s placid, pallid eyes. ‘All right. You’re now Corporal Tarr—’
Strings swung to the last soldier, a rather plain young man wearing leathers but no weapon. ‘And yours?’ ‘Bottle.’
Couldn’t get past the shield.’ Strings glared at his new corporal. ‘Where’d you learn that skill?’ The man shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Don’t like getting hit.’ ‘Well, do you ever counter-attack?’ Tarr frowned. ‘Sure. When they’re tired.’
‘I’m good with a crossbow,’ Tarr said, shrugging. ‘And a fast loader,’ Koryk added. ‘It was that that made Braven decide to make him a marine.’
‘So who named Braven Tooth, Sergeant?’ I did, after the bastard left one of his in my shoulder the night of the brawl. The brawl we all later denied happening.
‘Well, Bottle, someday I’d like to hear how you got through basic training without picking up a weapon—no, not now. Not tomorrow either, not even next week. For now, tell me what I should be using you for.’ ‘Scouting. Quiet work.’ ‘As in sneaking up behind someone. What do you do then? Tap him on the shoulder? Never mind.’ This man smells like a mage to me, only he doesn’t want to advertise it. Fine, be that way, we’ll twist it out of you sooner or later. ‘I do the same kind of work,’ Smiles said. She settled a forefinger on the pommel of one of the two thin-bladed knives at her belt. ‘But I
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‘So there’s only two soldiers in this outfit who can actually fight toe-to-toe?’ ‘You said one more’s coming,’ Koryk pointed out. ‘We can all handle crossbows,’ Smiles added. ‘Except for Bottle.’
‘Well hey,’ a second soldier said, grinning through his bushy red beard, ‘someone can count after all. These marines are full of surprises.’ ‘Fifth,’ the first soldier said. There was a strange, burnished cast to the man’s skin, making Strings doubt his initial guess that he was Falari. Then he noted an identical sheen to the red-bearded soldier, as well as on a much younger man. ‘I’m Gesler,’ the first soldier added. ‘Temporarily sergeant of this next-to-useless squad.’ The red-bearded man dropped his pack to the floor. ‘We was coastal guards, me and Gesler and Truth. I’m Stormy. But Coltaine
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‘Adjutant Stormy,’ Strings muttered. ‘Captain Gesler. Hood’s rattling bones—’ ‘We ain’t none of those things any more,’ Gesler said. ‘Like I said, I’m now a sergeant, and Stormy’s my corporal. And the rest here…there’s Truth, Tavos Pond, Sands and Pella. Truth’s been with us since Hissar, and Pella was a camp guard at the otataral mines
‘Hey, Gesler, think we should have done that? Changed our names, I mean. This Strings here is Old Guard as sure as I’m a demon in my dear father’s eye.’
The soldier Gesler had named Tavos Pond—a tall, dark, moustached man who was probably Korelri
‘Whiskeyjack. He was busted down to sergeant before I was, the bastard. Mind you, I then made corporal, so I beat him after all.’ ‘Except now you’re a sergeant again. While Whiskeyjack’s an outlaw. Try beating that.’
She impounded my ship.’ ‘You had a ship?’ ‘By rights of salvage, aye. I was the one who brought Coltaine’s wounded to Aren. And that’s the thanks I get.’ ‘You could always punch her in the face. That’s what you usually end up doing to your superiors, sooner or later.’
‘There wasn’t many Falari made it into the Bridgeburners. Bad timing, I think, but there was one.’ ‘Aye, and I’m him.’
And in the leaning shack that had once housed them both—its frond-woven roof long since stripped away—with the broad, shallow-draught fisherboat close by now showing but a prow and a stern, the rest buried beneath the coral sand, the father had laid himself down and slept.
Crokus noted one set in particular, prints large and far apart yet far too lightly pressed into the damp sand.
It was one thing for an old man to die in his sleep, but it was another for Hood himself—or one of his minions—to physically arrive to collect the man’s soul.
Her soul’s depths had become unfathomable, and whatever lay at its heart was otherworldly and…not quite human.
Ascendancy was but one of the countless mysteries of the world, a world where uncertainty ruled all—god and mortal alike—and its rules were impenetrable.
But, it seemed to him, to ascend was also to surrender. Embracing what to all intents and purposes could be called immortality, was, he had begun to believe, presaged by a turning away.
And could life not be called a mortal’s first lover? A lover whose embrace was then rejected in that fiery crucible of ascendancy? Crokus wondered how far she had gone down that path—for it was a path she was surely on, this beautiful woman no older than him, who moved in appalling silence, with a killer’s terrible grace, this temptress of death.
Did Apsalar want him to walk at her side on this path to ascendancy—if that was what it was? Was it Crokus she wanted, or simply…somebody, anybody?
wonder, does fear of dying lie at the root of ascendancy? If so, then he would never make it, for, somewhere in all that had occurred, all that he had survived in coming to this place, Crokus had lost that fear.
an alley in Kan had been the place where Shadowthrone had sent them, not to the road above the village as he had promised. The bookmaker had paid the debt in turn to Apsalar and Crokus for a single night’s work that had proved, for Crokus, brutally horrifying. It was one thing to practise passes with the blades, to master the deadly dance against ghosts of the imagination, but he had killed two men that night. Granted, they were murderers,
Apsalar had shown no compunction in cutting his throat, no qualms at the spray of blood that spotted her gloved hands and forearms. There had been a local with them, to witness the veracity of the night’s work. In the aftermath, as he stood in the doorway and stared down at the three corpses, he’d lifted his head and met Crokus’s eyes. Whatever he saw in them had drained the blood from the man’s face. By morning Crokus had acquired a new name. Cutter.
And therein resided the final truth. Anyone could become a killer. Anyone at all.
Pillars, columns, tree stumps, platforms, staircases leading nowhere, and for every dozen there was one among them holding a prisoner. None of whom seemed capable of dying. Not entirely.
Thirteen hundred children, resurrected on a whim. Shining eyes following his every move, mapping his every step, memorizing his every gesture—what could he teach them? The art of mayhem? As if children needed help in that.
Besides, Minala seemed to have it all under control. A natural born tyrant, she was, both in public and in private amidst the bedrolls in the half-ruined hovel they shared. And oddly enough, he’d found he was not averse to tyranny. In principle, that is. Things had a way of actually working when someone capable and implacable took charge. And he’d had enough experience taking orders to not chafe at her position of command. Between her and the aptorian demoness, a certain measure of control was being maintained, a host of life skills were being inculcated…
